Gender

Understanding how crises affect women and men, girls and boys of different ages and disparities is critical to effective humanitarian preparedness and response. Women, girls, boys and men have distinct needs, priorities, responsibilities, limitations and protection needs. They are exposed to differential risks and vulnerabilities but also play unique and important roles in preparedness and in responding to emergencies, conflicts and building peace within their respective communities. Gender equality in humanitarian action is about better targeting and programming and therefore about effectiveness of humanitarian action reaching all segments of the affected population.

More than 1 per cent of people across the planet right now are caught up in major humanitarian crises. The international humanitarian system is more effective than ever at meeting their needs – but global trends including poverty, population growth and climate change are leaving more people than ever vulnerable to the devastating impacts of conflicts and disasters.

In order to make peace processes more inclusive, increased participation by women and other excluded groups has been emphasised for decades, as well as the need to adopt a gender perspective within peace processes. However, the discussion has tended to focus on counting women and treating women’s participation as synonymous with a gender perspective. Defining what a gender perspective is and how it could be applied throughout a peace process has remained largely unexplored.

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the Security Council open debate on women, peace and security: “Promoting the Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and Sustaining Peace through Women’s Political and Economic Empowerment”, in New York today:

• As we approach the 20-year anniversary of the first UN Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security, implementing peace agreements in a manner that considers both men’s and women’s security and forwards women’s inclusion remains a key challenge.

The present report is submitted pursuant to Security Council resolution 2366 (2017), by which the Council established the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia and requested me to report on its activities every 90 days. The report covers the period from 21 July to 26 September 2018.

Executive Committee of the High Commissioner’s Programme
Sixty-ninth session Geneva, 1 to 5 October 2018
Item 4 (a) of the provisional agenda
Consideration of reports on the work of the Standing Committee International Protection

Men and women often have different roles and responsibilities in society and therefore experience climate change impacts in different ways. This video shows what Colombia, Uganda and Viet Nam are doing to develop gender-responsive national adaptation plans for the agriculture sectors. This country-driven work is carried out under a global programme known as Integrating Agriculture in National Adaptation Plans (NAP-Ag), jointly coordinated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Tackling the problems of poverty, vulnerability and exclusion that persist in parts of the world that continue to be affected by violence or political insecurity is difficult for several reasons. For one, because of the complexity of the prevailing social, economic and political systems, solutions to chronic problems are far from obvious.
One response to this aspect of the challenge is adaptive programme design and management.

In the past month, the numbers of people on the move has dramatically increased with an upsurge of adults and children walking from destination to destination. The Colombian Red Cross Society (CRCS) has faced challenges due to the changing nature of this population flow, which has led to modifying fixed aid units in the border areas to the establishment of mobile aid points along the roads where this population transits.

Washington, D.C. - Within the framework of the cooperation agreement currently in force with the State of Colombia, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) announces the visit to the country of Commissioner Francisco Eguiguren and Commissioner Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño, in order to hold meetings with the institutions covered by the Peace Agreement and carry out promotional activities.